5.11 Summary

This chapter has introduced many of the Node types available in Java 3D. The Java 3D Nodes cover the basic requirements of most scenegraphs:

 Propagation of boundary information

 Specification of collision boundary information

 Grouping of Nodes into logical units (Group)

 Attach and detach Groups (BranchGroup)

 Influence the order of rendering within a Group (OrderedGroup)

 Sharing of Groups across the scenegraph hierarchy (SharedGroup and Link)

 Rotate, translate and scale the children of a Group (TransformGroup)

Armed with the information in chapters 4 and 5 you should be able to tackle the high−level scenegraph design for your application. The chapters to come will also be very useful, as we start to discuss how the scenegraph fits into the Java 3D VirtualUniverse as well as the rendering model (chapter 6), the data model for your application (chapter 7), and Java 3D’s geometry description capabilities (chapter 8).